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Innovation and Intellectual Property Management (IIPM) Laboratory

Welcome to the Innovation and Intellectual Property (IIPM) Laboratory led by Prof. Frank Tietze. We are a group of academics, students and practitioners with a deep interest in the role of intellectual property (IP) in innovation processes and systems. We are part of the University's Engineering Department, Division E (commonly known as Institute for Manufacturing - IfM), particularly the IfM's Centre for Technology Management (CTM)

The IIPM lab adopts an engineering management (firm level) and relational perspective on IP within distributed and collaborative (open) innovation processes and systems for emerging (manufacturing) technologies. Employing predominately a problem-driven research philosophy and empirical, mostly but not entirely qualitative methods, our research focuses on the role of IP and its strategic management for developing and deploying sustainable innovation (e.g. climate change mitigation and adaptation technologies), addressing global challenges, such as climate change, achieving sustainable development goals (SDG), and accelerating sustainability transitions.

Our research on Innovation and IP Management (IIPM) focuses on two priority areas:

1. Strategic IP management for innovation 

We focus on IP issues that are of strategic relevance for technology-based firms, e.g. within R&D activities, innovation processes but also in corporate strategy and decision making. Our research focuses on IP management in the context of emerging technologies, particularly those that help address global challenges, such as climate change, achieving sustainable development goals (SDG), and accelerating sustainability transitions. 

2. Novel technologies for reimagining IP management

Many services and business processes become increasingly technology-based or technology-supported. Technologies underpinning IP management have changed drastically over the recent decades with patent data being digitized and the continuous development of increasingly sophisticated software solutions for analyzing and visualizing IP data. This has just been the beginning and we are at a tipping point for how IP management is being handled. Technologies such as AI, deep and machine learning, and natural language processing have been adopted in other domains already to a much more sophisticated level than for IP analytics. Technologies, such as blockchain (and distributed ledger technologies) may contribute to the digitization of licensing transactions and the automation of complex royalty payment streams. We are interested to better understanding the business cases and models for those and other technologies and contributing to the development of such solutions that help to "reinvent" IP management. 

 

 

 

 

News & Blog articles

Patent Olympiad at IPOS IP Week in Singapore

9 October 2024

Dr Nigel Clarke, Visiting Fellow to the IIPM Lab is co-founder of the Patent Olympiad, which recently took place in Singapore at the IPOS IP Week. He has provided a short article below. powinners2024.jpeg Image by N. Clarke. Nigel is all the way to the right. By Nigel Clarke. (C) 2024 Patent searching is a profession...

Reflections on the EC POINT project

8 October 2024

In the recently published European IP Helpdesk Bulletin Prof. Tietze reflects on what has happened to the capabilities of SMEs to manage IP in open innovation projects following the publication of the EC POINT report in 2021. The Bulletin is available here: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/ee45fb15-...

Farewell to Alexander Viets and David Gross

2 October 2024

We are saying good-bye to two of our IIPM visitors. Alexander Viets was a visiting PhD student from the University of Muenster. David Gross visited us to complete his master thesis as part of his programme at the RWTH Aachen. We look forward to continue our collaborations on joint papers and wish you all the best for your...